Four males and one female win E-Sports Women's tournament.

[SpicyMoth]

Apologies in advance, I imagine not many MNer's are that big into gaming so I have no idea if anyone will even care that much about this as it's such small fry compared to more common topics here, but I thought it worth bringing up anyway.

In late August, Riot Games announced a week long LCS Game Changers event. The event is to "feature the best female players in League of Legends. The best female players in the League of Legends scene will be scouted by professional and amateur teams in a bid to create a professional esports ecosystem that is diverse and inclusive."

Here's a Twitter/X video interviewing some of those who were scouted.
https://x.com/LCSOfficial/status/1705635639113257249?s=20

Attached in a picture below are the winners of the tournament, the Astrocats Team.

This is just life now. It's everywhere, and I am tired.
Those who know, know - The female experience gaming is quite enough to deal with on it's own without all this gender woo stuff taking centre stage to belittle and demean us just that tiny bit more 🙄

I'm not 100% on this, but I would assume because women are generally speaking less likely to be gamers - So in the same way that there are "women in tech" days for example to encourage women into these spaces etc, that could be the reasoning? Often times there are monetary prize pools, so it could be to give women the opportunity at a chance to win those prizes too, rather than it just defaulting to males.

Another reason could also be male gamer bias for not wanting girls/women on their team.
You'd be surprised how many games you could play and the second you speak in game the men will immediately go "Oh well GG guys, we've lost, we've got a girl" or worse - I imagine there's a sense of women & girls feeling safer amongst other women and girls as well.

In chess for example, the second hypothetical reason wouldn't happen as it's essentially a game of quiet consideration of moves, and it's one player vs another rather than a whole team vs a whole team.

On a side note, I have no idea what my last comment on this thread was about re; links? I think I may have cross posted something meant for another thread at the time lol!

The main reason would be a lack of representation at a competitive level. Why not have a girl's only league? It might be inspirational! It'll give girls something to aim for.

Less obviously, girls and women might have disadvantages arising from gaming culture; misogyny and sexual harassment is rife (I used to spend a LOT of time on World of Warcraft as a teen so can vouch for this!). It's off-putting and annoying when you just want to play.

And a small, but not insignificant, reason: Girls could have different social pressures at home holding them back; these could range from parents not thinking it's right for a girl to be playing games so much, to being less likely to have a friendship group that joins in with gaming. These last reasons I guess some might see as a bit "straw-clutching" and I see why as they seem small, but often female disadvantage involves a kind of "death by a thousand cuts".

This isn't chess. E-sports are almost universally real-time, relying on reaction speed, making them physical, and I believe men have a fast reaction / eye-coordination advantage. Young men in particular - there should also be age categories, if there aren't already.

It's funny you brought up the voice changer aspect of it though, throughout my entire life gaming I've only ever really come across the usual "Girls are bad at video games" rhetoric and just general leering

I used to game quite a lot and played Gears of War when it first came out. I was quite good and got constant "your BF is playing for you, you just have the headset on" crap, despite the fact that my BF was also playing on the same team and my stats were better than his! Also the amount of dick pics was unbelievable.

I'm not surprised by the 4 males winning, it is the inevitable consequence of inclusion, so many more males play.

I don't know about the men vs women reaction times but the age is definitely a factor, I've gotten much slower as I have aged.

Less obviously, girls and women might have disadvantages arising from gaming culture; misogyny and sexual harassment is rife (I used to spend a LOT of time on World of Warcraft as a teen so can vouch for this!). It's off-putting and annoying when you just want to play.

This is definitely an issue. Similarly you need to join Discord servers if you want to access gaming communities, have a chance of building a consistent team, and so on. Unless you're playing a female-dominated game (which isn't usually the case with competitive multiplayer), those servers are generally a toxic and misogynistic environment.

I'm lucky in that I play mostly singleplayer so the servers don't give me such a huge advantage, but I've seen firsthand how unwelcoming they can be to women. Unsolicited DMs (I had to turn my DMs off), misogynistic comments in voice calls, people being shocked women played, male friends who were pretty good at treating me like a human being but had no understanding of the female online experience and didn't really believe it was that bad.

I point blank refuse to join new servers now unless another woman can vouch for them.

I believe there are studies showing that male people have faster hand eye coordination. The speed of the brain processing specifically for recognition of stimuli then combined with more fast twitch muscles in hands would give male people an advantage.

I will see if I can find the studies. Dr Hilton has discussed the reaction time on Twitter before.

If there is no sex advantage, it would be difficult for the 'marginalised gender' of men with gender feels to get any representation in the category.

Given the marginalised gender is .1%(?) of the category, and sex is irrelevant, female competitors should dominate. If sex is not a factor, men with gender would have to make up 80% of the category to have that much representation.

@illinivich - I don't follow your logic. Gendermen can easily dominate without a physical sex advantage just by a significant male/female split in participation

I would personally say that the desire to participate (both innate and heavily influenced by the factors @songaboutjam mentioned above) is what heavily skews the competitive gaming population.

So you can achieve the outcome by looking at probabilities.

P(an e-sport competitor is female) is a very small number.

P(a male e-sport competitor is a genderman) is another very small number (but probably bigger than the probability for a random man)

So if you start randomly picking gendermen and women from the e-sport pool, you easily end up with more gendermen if the second small number is bigger than the first small number.

Physical ability no doubt adds to that, but it's not required. In the case of e-sports I would actually say that the social justification for separate classification is extremely strong, far more so than many real sports. There really is a huge cultural barrier to women here.

It's like there being more male "woman sex offenders" than female - men don't have to be better at it to achieve that outcome - you just need the male:female participation ratio to be greater than the women:gendermen population ratio.

I think pp are right to highlight the complex interaction between autism and gender euphoria which may be insignificant element within gaming. There is an element of fantasy about gaming which allows an escape from the world and I guess trans has this feature to it? I think gaming and trans ideology both create alternate fantastical realities so no surprise with the above......

Thank you for sharing, this makes me so sad.

@illinivich- I don't follow your logic. Gendermen can easily dominate without a physical sex advantage just by a significant male/female split in participation

I didnt say physical sex advantage.

But thats my point. Men with gender are over representation in this category because they have a sex advantage - whether that be physical, or social or any other reason.

If we, for a minute, believe a category of 'women and men with gender' is needed, its odd that the numbers of participants is so disproportionately skewed towards men.

Men with gender make up less than 1% of the general population, but make up 80% of this gaming category?

Hard agree - when I was a teen, World of Warcraft was a place to escape, where my mind was projected into the avatar of my choice. An avatar that could build wealth, 'level up', build status and become successful in a way strongly correlated with the amount of time you spend playing.

The real world is obviously not entirely like this; you can put hours of work into something and it fails, or you can put minimal effort into something and it works. People judge you without knowing you. In an online game, people judge you based on your stats more than anything (you can even have incredibly poor social conduct but if you're wearing an elite piece of armour won from some rare monster, or by completing a really difficult 'quest' then people will be in awe).

I think being trans invites this awe and respect amongst teens (and many adults), especially online. And poor social conduct can be passed off as problems related to 'cishetnormative oppression', rather than character flaws. It's the ultimate body modification, and you can choose the clothes and hairstyle in a way that previously parents may have pushed back against (as a teen I was desperate for short, blue hair but my mum, and school, wouldn't allow it), like choosing an avatar.

Absolutely.

I think this category overlaps with 'not getting enough attention for simply being male'.

Thanks, that's interesting. Even more reason then to have sexed categories.

Gaming culture was just an endless experience of being talked down to and not taken seriously as you obviously didn't understand thing due to your x chromosome

Or

Being constantly subjected to comments about sex, getting your tits out or just generally why aren't you available to shag.

It was awful.

I was in my 30s and married by the time I gave up. I think there was a couple of us - I was the eldest - but this was in a midst of thousands of blokes of all ages. I loved the games but it was totally the attitude of those playing. Where it was most disturbing was the way 13 and 14 year old girls were treated. There's a cat in hells chance I'd let a teenage daughter play.

I was a well above average player.

It's a whole clique thing. You are ostracised for not going along with the culture or objecting to it. You wouldnt be accepted into certain teams if you weren't in with the right people. You had to be good at diplomacy. The social power structures were totally political. If you fell out with the wrong person that could lead to pile ons and the end of your gaming life. And it was totally obsessive.

For the most part I ended up playing under a gender neutral name or a male name to avoid the worst of it.

Honestly I enjoyed it, but there was very little that I'd argue was particularly healthy. It was a bullying culture all round. Theres no concept of being able to complain about sexism - you accept it or you fuck off is the mentality and you will get piled on and driven out by the harassment. They don't want to address issues because they like the environment. Those at the top of the social structure feel important. It's a real life power thing rather than it being an online game.

The best gamers were frequently the most obsessive and the ones who could spend the most time playing it.

They'd get irate at players who didn't dedicate their whole lives to it.

It was ultimately about the power trip and feeling important a lot of the time though.

Not actually the game. But the social status within the game.

Why are males going into female categories? Because they are seeking status.

I love games but online gamers are a real mixed bag. I'm really saddened but not at all surprised to read of the experiences of female gamers in this thread. I'm a middle-aged man, as it happens, and I want no part of online gaming with randoms.

So much of it is people getting too attached to the status and power dynamics in the gamer social group (because they can get more status and validation online than they do in real life), and then the lord of the flies toxic misogyny shit only compounds that.

Like I've been playing games for over 40 years, I'm still crap, wouldn't stand a chance in any online competitive game of any kind. I'm ok with that, but getting barracked by 14 year olds (or older males acting like it) for my lack of chops doesn't seem like a good time for me.

I want to add, it must be extra frustrating for gamers who posted above, who are actually good at the games, to get sexist shit talked and all that, despite being above average ability. That must be super fucking annoying.

A bit aside, but I found this interesting